'What art thou? Whence derived? With what intent Placed where perpetual hindrances exhaust Thy wasted strength, in baffled effort spent? Where in blind maze, with crafty windings crossed, With stumbling-blocks beset, with pitfalls strewed, Thou wanderest, in endless error lost; Athirst beside glad rivers that elude, With mocking lapse, thy tantalized pursuit, And hungering where gilded husks delude With bitter ashes as of Dead Sea fruit, Ashes of Hope, but seed of Discontent, That rears its upas growth from blighted root? Around, thou hear'st Creation eloquent, Hymning creative attributes, and seest The starry marvels of the firmament, And marvels of the nearer earth, released By impulse from within, not dimly shown, Nor plainlier in the greatest than the least: And, through the known discovering the unknown, Acknowledgest thy Maker, power supreme, Might, and dominion, deeming His alone. Nor His the lax dominion mayst thou deem That builds up empire, and when built, neglects. Lo! where, afar, sidereal orbits gleam, What first impelled, impelling still, directs: Urges and guides each solar chariot, The mundane mass of every globe connects, By its own energy cohering not, E'en as dead leaves, decaying languidly, Not from themselves derive the force to rot. 'All-strengthening, all-sustaining Deity, Diffused throughout the infinite, abides, Dwells and upholds:--then, haply, dwells in thee? Yea, verily. Within thy frame resides What, by its movement only mayst thou know. The circling blood, thy being's ambient tides, Is't thine own will that bids them ebb and flow, And from their inundating flood depose Organic germs, whence health and vigour grow? Yet though such witness serve thee to disclose In human tenement divine abode, Not thine be the material creed that shows The spirit's birthplace in the moulded clod; Not thine the pantheist raving, that because God dwelleth with thee, thou thyself art God. Bethink thee--is't self-reverence that o'erawes Thy prostrate soul, and from thy faltering tongue, Subdued, involuntary homage draws? And when by harrowing pang thine heart is wrung, Is't for self-aid thy wandering eyes inquire, Heavenward, at length, in fervid suppliance flung? And from thy native slough of sensual mire, Is't to the mark of thine own purity Thy loftier aims and holier hopes aspire? Harshly thy fleshly fetters bear on thee, In dark and dreary prison-house confined, Cramped and diseased with long captivity, And hath divine Intelligence designed That noisome dungeon for her own restraint-- By her own act to galling bonds consigned,-- Self-doomed, with wilful purpose, to acquaint Herself with sin and sorrow, and pollute Aethereal essence with corporeal taint? How doth thy helpless misery confute